


Out of Time

by Sookiestark



Series: Three Stories of Winter Solstice in Westeros. [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Canon, Winter Solstice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 02:52:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13090872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sookiestark/pseuds/Sookiestark
Summary: Bran and Meera have some time to themselves away from the cave.





	Out of Time

**Author's Note:**

> Just to clarify -- I do not think this is possible but I do want them to have some time alone together. So if you are willing to suspend disbelief, please continue

It starts with the cold.

She had been cold and starving. There was not enough food or warmth in the cave. There was definitely not enough company or care. The last time he came back she said he had been gone for two days. All she could do was wait for him. Spluttering and trying to remember how to breathe through his lungs, he had looked at her like a drowning boy, who needed to be saved. However, Bran had started to get the sense that he was doomed and one day he would be more tree than man, timeless and unmoved.

Leaf and the other children of the Forest fed Meera what they could, but they were clannish creatures and did not keep her company. Hodor kept her company as best as he could. Summer was usually by her feet, trying to keep her warm, but it must be lonely to have no one to speak to. He was gone more and more in his visions.

When she saw he woke, she had smiled and he knew she loved him. One thing was certain, Bran knew he loved her. Clutching his hand, she had squeezed it. “I didn't know when you would come back. You were gone so long. You were gone so long. I thought you might not come back.” 

She laughs trying to make a joke in the dark. 

“I will always come back for you, Meera.” As he spoke the words, he hoped it would not be a lie. 

She whispered to him “Let's go to Winterfell we have learned all we need. If not Winterfell, we could go to the Neck. My father has a godswood as ancient as Winterfell. We could be safe, together.”

Bran could sense she did not trust the Children of the Forest or the Three Eyed Raven. That night when everyone was sleeping, she had kissed it. It was a sweet desperate thing to try and keep him near her. She could sense him slipping. Slowly, there small closed mouth kisses started growing into long kisses and touches that burned and ached. They started sharing the same furs under which they could be close and try to make the other breathless and dizzy.

Bran had started to understand the full extent of his injury. He would never be able to make love to her like most men could. He would never be able to dance with her or walk her to the heart tree and say their vows. He would not father children.

When Hodor would take him to wash or do his bodily functions, she never pitied him, but he was more and more upset by it. He did not want her to see his weakness. Bran wanted her to want him like she would any man.

He tried to imagine what his father might say of his feelings of weakness. Ned Stark would probably say that a man is more than a pair of legs. A man is honor, bravery, family. Even the smallest wolf has a place in the pack. But the other night she had said, red faced from the firelight and heat of their shared kisses, “What I would give to be alone with you away from this cave, away from all of this... I would give everything Bran Stark to be alone with you.”

It had given him an idea. Time was short now, so incredibly short.There was an urgency.

She would grieve him and worse, almost unbearably worse, was that she might despise him. She might regardless of whether he does this or not. Perhaps this was his last selfish act.

The last thing that Bran Stark would do as a mortal who loved and dreamed and mourned his legs and his mother and father

The walkers would break the wards of this cave. They were coming.

Bran had asked Branch to help him. Branch was one of the Children of the Forest who seemed helpful and amused at how in love the two young humans were. 

Branch had made the tea for Meera to drink and had coordinated the time. The Three Eyed Raven always went away in his visions on the longest night, to spend the long night in his memories, lost in yesterdays of when he walked as Bloodraven. 

The Three Eyed Raven was sleeping as close to sleep as he got

This whole plan was reckless, incredibly reckless. Yet, Bran felt he had to try this once to be alone with her. He had told her of the plan, telling her of the dangers. Meera had agreed to it immediately. The idea of getting out of the cave and spending time alone with him was worth the risk. After all, her brother had had the greensight and the blood of the First Men was strong in her. The world was made up of fifteen years olds making reckless choices. Let them this time. Tomorrow they could mourn them or grieve them. 

In the cave, he looked at her face. Her pupils were blown and her eyes were entirely black. The color in her cheeks were bright but her pulse was steady.

“Meera, grab my hand”

He wanted to always remember how beautiful she was to him, even if no one else ever called her beautiful. He could hear how disconnected the Three Eyed Raven was from those he had loved and he did not want to only remember her as something detached . He wanted to feel the the desire for her always, to feel the tangle of her curls against his fingers How she would feel if he could stand against her? Not as some half man, as a cripple, but as a knight, as a man. As her lord and her husband.

He knew it was too late for all these things and things were in motion that he could not change. A man could not change the path laid out for him. 

But tonight

She smiled at him.

He had come earlier to set the room in Winterfell up. It was the Lord's chambers but his father was still traveling to King's Landing with Jon from the Tower of Joy and his mother was still at Riverrun with Robb. No one slept here and as long as they were quiet they would not be heard.

Bran liked coming to this time when his father planned for war and called the Northern bannermen. He liked watching his father, younger than Jon is now, before he was married, full of grief and tragedy over his dead brother and father, his lost sister, kidnapped. It reminded him of his own circumstance and he felt close to him watching him lay in his bed and call the North men, troubled about his future. 

He was hoping the blood of the First Men would be strong in her, and that she would not go mad He pulled, tugging her softly through memories and time and she followed him through time or memories to Winterfell of long ago.

“Where are we?”  
“Winterfell.. How are you feeling?”

“Strange but well.”

He looked her over, but mostly in her eyes. He wanted her well and whole. 

“Bran, you are standing?”

“Here in the land of memories, I can stand and walk and fight and ride. I fly here. I am whole here.” 

“You are always whole to me. What is this a dream?”

“No, not as such. It is in between. We are outside of time. We might be.. So if someone was sleeping in this room they might dream about us. But someone walking in the room would not see us. They might hear us if they were listening.”

Meera smiled “You can walk here.” 

Bran smiled down at her. Meera reached up to him “You have grown so tall. I have noticed, but with you standing, you are so much taller than me. We are in Winterfell.. Where?” 

“My father’s rooms. The Lord’s chambers. My father is fighting at the Trident. We will be alone here, like you asked.I have never done this standing…”he said as he leaned in and kissed her.

Bran kisses her and they bump noses and laugh awkwardly. 

 

“Brandon Stark, did you do all this to seduce me?”

“No I just wanted to spend some time with you alone...Where I was whole. Where I could do this?” He put his arms around her and spins her around the room.

Meera is laughing and her curls are falling over her shoulders and she is laughing. Bran has not heard her laugh in ages. It is a lovely sound. 

He remembers a time when he dreamed of adventure and to see all the world held. There were other dreams he used to have--- but they grow fewer and fewer. He misses them. The dream where he is the Lord of Winterfell and she is the Lady of Winterfell and they have a castle full of children. She laughs all the time in that dream. 

“Where I could kiss you…” and pulls her close.

This time when they kiss their bodies fit together like they were always made for each other. It feels right and he feels less anxious, less awkward. He feels like he is almost out of time and he needs her to know how he feels. 

Bran speaks to her, brushing her curls away from her face, “Know that I love you, no matter what. Know that I will always love you. If the dead break the wards and we die, know that you were my only love. I would never hurt you.”

She kisses him once and unties the simple tunic she has wore in this space. She lifts her arms up and pulls it off her until she is naked. Bran watches her undress and realizes how love and women are an intoxicating things.

Meera takes him by the hand and leads him to the bed, where she kisses him and smiles. Here they are warm and not hungry. Here they are safe. Here they are together. This is all they have and this is all they will ever have.

As they lay down together, Meera draws the blankets over them and Bran kisses her gently. 

******

“The Stark line must continue. It is an ancient line and there is ancient magic. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell,” the Three Eyed Raven says from the tangle of roots.

Branch nodded,” It will. All is set. It is finished.”

The old man in the tree mumbles, “A Stark must always be in Winterfell.”  
*******  
It starts with her leaving Winterfell. It was happening as he had seen it happen a thousand times. He needed to show no emotion. He wanted her so far away or at least he had before.. Before..  
The sweet soft hazy before when he had been Bran Stark. When her safety had still mattered and so much more had mattered, all those human feelings.

Bran could look back and remember how he had swore that that this would never happen. That no matter how how he changed, his feelings for her would never change. However, when he had become the Three Eyed Raven, his feelings had changed.

Now, he was unable to feel anything at all. He heard her heart breaking, in the cracks of her voice, in the watery quality of her eyes. Let her heart break Bran thinks. Let her curse him all the way to the Neck. He had promised himself he would protect her and the further away from Winterfell the better for her. He has seen the Army of the Dead. He would rather be away from here. He knows the secret she keeps from him. 

Meera is upset with him, shaking. “My brother died for you. Summer and Hodor died for you. I almost died for you.”

He hears the emotions and knows she wants to tell him about the child but she decides against it in her anger. 

Meera Reed leaves Winterfell, angry and hurt. Bran watches her leave and feels he has done the last thing he could as a man. He has kept his true love safe and well. Now, he can put all of that aside forever.

 

*******

It ends with Meera and Sansa in Winterfell.

Meera came several years after the Second War for the Dawn. It was a harvest festival at Winterfell. Meera presents herself as Lady Reed, as her father perished in the War. Meera expresses her condolences for all that Lady Sansa has lost, her sister Arya and her brother, Bran. 

Sansa notices the small boy with dark reddish curls and blue eyes. He is about three and is the very likeness of Bran. Sansa asks, leaning down to play with the boy. “What is your son’s name?”

“Brandon Snow..”

Later, in Sansa’s study, Meera will tell her the strange story of how her son was made. “I do not know if I would believe it if I hadn't lived it. I had wanted to tell your brother but by the time, I figured it out, he wasn’t the same. I never told him.” 

Meera spoke to Sansa, “There is a heart tree in the godswood at our castle. Its carved face is laughing. We call it the Laughing Tree. Sometimes when my son and I are there I hear Bran. He told me to bring his son home to Winterfell to meet his sister. So I brought him.”

Sansa pulled the boy up to her lap. She hugged him. “I am so glad you brought him.”


End file.
